Oh, HP. Why did you run this experiment? What did you expect? Positive results?

As if Hewlett-Packard didn't have enough egg on its face this week, according to The Next Web, the company held a little experiment prior to the TouchPad's release which pitted the HP tablet against Apple's iPad 2 in a little webOS race. The OS platform behind the TouchPad actually ran "over twice as fast" on the iPad 2 than the device it was meant to run on.

Oh, HP. Why?

Naturally, this had a bit of a negative effect on the webOS team members working on the products who then, according to the Next Web's sources, "wanted them gone."

"The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple's iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed."

But this week's mercy killing of the TouchPad and Pre hardware actually came as a shock to HP. The Next Web reports that "only the top executives knew anything about this decision and even senior staff as high as Ari Jaaksi, the Vice President of webOS software, didn't know about the shuttering of hardware before it happened."

Then again, releasing the TouchPad as an iPad competitor when it had a slower processor and couldn't even run its own OS as fast as the iPad might've hinted at an early demise.

Now, whether or not the company issues refunds is still up in the air.